15 comments:

Interesting! They take them home to count there? Here, everything at the counting centre but these days, they count at the polling centre and they will total the totals at the counting centre. If there is a request for a recount, they will have to do it all over again and in the past, there had been cases where they would count again and again till the wee hours of the morning the next day!

No - Sorry, I didn't make it clear enough. The counting at home was prior to the election- to ensure she has enough supplies. The actual counting of votes was done, of course, at the polling station, under the supervision of scrutineers. Her station did not finish counting till about 1 am, and then the votes have to be delivered to the collection centres and she got home about 2:30 am.

An explanstion of the counting can be found here: http://www.aec.gov.au/voting/counting/senate_count.htm. And also here: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/08/14/explainer-what-preferential-voting

Complicato! This kind of voting system can, in principle, produce strange results. Suppose there are 3 candidates A, B, C and 6 voters who cast their votes as follows:(1,2,3), (3,1,2), (2,3,1), (1,3,2), (3,2,1), (2,1,3),where (x,y,z) means A, B, C are ranked x, y, z respectively.That means in the primary votes, each of the candidates A, B, C gets 2 votes. Therefore we cannot eliminate any of the candidates for the second counting. The system is in a deadlock!In principle, it is possible to have a scenario in which there are 6 candidates and 720 voters choose 6 preferentially in such a way that all the 6 candidates get the same number of primary votes. Deadlock!

The artificial example I gave is even stranger. Each of A, B, C has the same number of level-2 and level-3 votes. It's a gridlock, a nightmare! Ha ha ... The chances of this case happening is very small if everyone votes randomly, but probably not that small since supporters exist. Of course, in actual practice, a deadlock in even the primary votes is unlikely because of the large number of voters. BTW can a voter choose less than the stipulated number (6 or 12) of preferences? Is it a considered a spoilt vote if he/she does?

I think I don't understand the ozzie voting system, even after KM sent me an email to explain it. Must be a sign of age catching up with me. I seem to interpret "preferential votes" in a different way. Thanks anyway for a "down-under" view of voting.

KM, you are quite right. I was trying to say that the "preferential" voting system can also produce a gridlock like the normal voting system - assuming that I had interpreted the "preferential" voting system correctly. Thanks for trying to educate an ignoramus on this unusual ozzie system.